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So, after spending a lot of time learning the psychic phase (Originally a Necron player), I think I have some good ideas as to how to get the most bang out of a Thousands Sons list.

I've made a list, which I will put through 2 games, one without the psychic phase to see exactly how far they get without their key phase, and another in a normal game.

So here's the revised list:

Thousand Sons Grand Coven-2000
-War Cabal-1645
--Sorcerer-185
---ML3, Astral Grimoire, MoT, AoDG, VotLW, Spell Familiar
--Rubric Marines-325
---Soulreaper Cannon, Rhino
--Rubric Marines-325
---Soulreaper Cannon Rhino
--Scarab Occult Terminators-250
--Scarab Occult Terminators-250
--Sorcerer-155
---ML3, MoT, AoDG, VotLW, Spell Familiar
--Sorcerer-155
---ML3, MoT, AoDG, VotLW, Spell Familiar
-Legion Armoury (x3)
--Triple Las-Pred-140
--Triple Las-Pred-140
--Pred- 75


C&C welcome

I'm not a huge fan of the rubrics, especially if you don't already have the models. Run 1 squad min as required for the cabal if that's the route you're going to take, but the termies are better than them in every measureable sense including durability per point spent.

The first list has the mauler hanging out in the wind as the only vehicle until the dreadclaws hit the field and as such, is going to be an easy first blood while not really being much of a deterant to anything. You'd be much better served with a pred who is at least immune to str 6 from the front so you can at least try and park it in a corner.

I feel that the dreadclaws are also a waste as they're for getting infantry models in close and thousand sons aren't really a fan of being charged which is what's going to happen when you put them that close. It also means that you've spent 140 points extra over a base squad (plus the other 100 for the dreadclaw) for the extra 5 men and the cannon that're only goign to get to fire once before they're charged and taken down.

I also think that the sorcs not even having an AoDG is also a criminal waste as they're going to be involved in a challenge or eating a krak missile at some points and a 6++ (5++ if you've cast force or one of the few other unit wide buffs to activate the blessing) and it's just not enough on a unit that is the sole purpose for the list.

You've also go no way to kill tanks beyond your single maulerfiend that is goign to be a crater before he gets in range of anything, so you're going to have to dive heretek for any sort of tank killing and that's a crapshoot with only 1 ML3 sorc (who gets 2 rolls) and 2 ML2 sorcs plus the termy sarge who each get 1 roll that's not wasted on the tzeentch table.

I'm not sure where you're getting this extra spell thing from either. All your sorcs are forced to waste a roll on the Tz table and then get the Tz primaris for their trouble. Any remaining ML's can then be freely rolled on whatever table you like, but a single roll means that you've got to be very lucky to get something useful.

Speaking of, the lack of spell familiars is almost criminal seeing as how starved for WC a thousand sons army is.

This is where the crux of the (many) issues with a sons army rears its head. You can't skimp on the sorcs because they're doing all the heavy lisfting in terms of damage so you need them to be reliable, so ML3 and a familiiar are basically mandatory and you can't afford to let them die, so an invo of some sort to get boosted to a 3++ is also highly recommended. Unfortunately, your troops are incredibly expensive and as you will soon find out, can't kill anything and can't fight their way out of a paper bag, so unless you dedicate a sorc to rolling div or geomortis for ignores cover, your rubricae aren't really doing anything but sucking up points. But then you've also basically got 1 weapon that's capable of dealing with tanks, so you also need them to roll something good on heretek or your bolters are just going to bounce of rhinos. Now that you've got your sorcs and troops paid for, you've also got nothing left for support to ease the workload of your sorcs who're already pulling double duty and have nothing to help them. You're also completely relying on volume of fire that will struggle to wound and a handful of rending shots from squads that will be wasting their firepower otherwise to deal with 2+ armour unless your sorcs can pick up the slack somehow.

The second list has many of the same issues as the first, though with insufficient bodies to last past turn 4. The rhinos are a great addition and IMHO are basically mandatory for any army without ahriman for his infiltrate and, again, IMHO, even mandatory with ahriman. You have all the same issues with your sorcs not having the casting power nor known spells to deal with all the threats while covering themselves, though the addition of a torrent of str8 shooting is a good one, especially now you can roll div to prescience the FF's without allying in daemons (and the FF's desperately need that re-roll because BS3 just doesn't cut it).

Unfortunately, now you have to pretty much stick all your sorcs in the termie unit and they can't cast duplicate powers.

The second list is far more primising than the first IMHO, but there's stil a bunch of issues with it. I'd be dropping the 3rd sorc and the min rubric squad to ensure that all sorcs have ML3 and a spell familiar and then see what other holes you can plug with the remaining points. I'd probably start with an AoDG on each sorc too, but you might not even have the points for that.

TLR List 2 is still bad, but much better than list 1. Thousand Sons are still terrible, don't bother with them until they eventually redo our codex and make them and the scarabs less bad.

 Drasius wrote:

TLR List 2 is still bad, but much better than list 1. Thousand Sons are still terrible, don't bother with them until they eventually redo our codex and make them and the scarabs less bad.

Thanks for the help.

So should I swap out a Grand Coven for the Sekhmet Conclave?

Should I drop both Forgefiends and go for a pred and more sorcs?

Maybe and probably not, in that order.

T5 termies certainly aren't bad, but they're also expensive, slow (they have to remain in range of 2 other units) and not that killy against hard targets. If you really want T5 termies, play death guard.

Forgefiends give you volume of str8 fire and an invo, las preds have better accuracy, str and ap while being immune to str 6 from the front but can't move and shoot well and are paper thin from the sides, so it's much of a muchness between them, but the FF's poor accuracy can be fixed with prescience and their AP issues are mitigated when firing at tanks and the lower str is compensated for by volume of fire and deamonforge. You can't make a pred fire more shots though, and unless you want to waste all your rolls on heretek, you're going to need an answer to AV, especially if the gladius is popular in your meta.

While the idea of more sorcs is attractive, espeically in a sons list, remember that you will never have enough WC to power all of them and each sorc you add after the first has severe diminishing returns on the amount of powers you can reliably cast, though the likelyhood that you won't roll anything worth casting does diminish at about the same rate, so it's a balancing act. Say each sorc rolls 2 powers that he wants to cast, 1x WC1 and 1x WC2. You'll want to throw roughly double the WC cost at each spell, so with 1 sorc you want to throw ~6 dice and you generate ~6.5 dice. With 2 sorcs, you want to throw ~12 dice, but you only generate ~9.5 dice, you're already at a shortfall of WC dice. With three sorcs, you're wanting to throw 18 dice, but you only generate ~12.5, you've only got enough to power 2 out of 3 sorcs. with 4 sorcs, you're wanting ~24 dice but only generate 15.5, not even enough to power the 3rd sorc. This is being conservative with each sorc having a familiar and accepting a 75% success rate before denying or, in the case of witchfires, denying (possibly with a bonus), to hit's, to wound's and saves. While we have our slowed aspiring sorcerors and only half slowed scarab occult sargents generating WC for us as well at a reduced rate, not only is it insufficient to cover the costs of our less slowed brethren in the HQ slot, it also means that they don't have any dice to cast with themselves, negating the whole selling point of them in the first place. Yet another reason why TSons suck despite psychic powers being strong this edition.

Ok, so with all that in mind, I left it to 3 ML3 sorcerers that will roll for whatever is really needed depending on the enemy list.
Got rid of the forge fiend for 3 predators and bumped the point up to 2000. I already have 20 Rubricae so I kinda need to use those. This list has 17 WC to start

 Kharne the Befriender wrote:
I already have 20 Rubricae so I kinda need to use those. This list has 17 WC to start

That's the thing, traitor legions made all the cult marines pretty much worthless in their own legions. Sons are outclassed in almost every way by Scarabs and only 1 formation even requires rubricae. Plague marines and 'Zerks are both bottom of the barrel trash that will never see the light of day in DG or WE armies while the doof doof brigade of noise marines is passable at best in the EC section but paying that many points just for a blastmaster or two was never a winning strategy, so they resort to normal marines with a mark and a banner and get to be death guard lite. It's quite disapointing.

Regardless, if you feel the need to actual use your rubricae, then it's either a CAD or war cabal for you since there's no other way to use them (though I suppose you could technically take them as an aux choice in a black crusade warband, but why would you?) So basically you need to decide if the loss of Obsec, mandatory inclusion of scarabs and a second sorc and limitations on what you can take as an Aux choice is worth it to take the war cabal over a CAD?

 Drasius wrote:

 Kharne the Befriender wrote:
I already have 20 Rubricae so I kinda need to use those. This list has 17 WC to start

That's the thing, traitor legions made all the cult marines pretty much worthless in their own legions. Sons are outclassed in almost every way by Scarabs and only 1 formation even requires rubricae. Plague marines and 'Zerks are both bottom of the barrel trash that will never see the light of day in DG or WE armies while the doof doof brigade of noise marines is passable at best in the EC section but paying that many points just for a blastmaster or two was never a winning strategy, so they resort to normal marines with a mark and a banner and get to be death guard lite. It's quite disapointing.

Regardless, if you feel the need to actual use your rubricae, then it's either a CAD or war cabal for you since there's no other way to use them (though I suppose you could technically take them as an aux choice in a black crusade warband, but why would you?) So basically you need to decide if the loss of Obsec, mandatory inclusion of scarabs and a second sorc and limitations on what you can take as an Aux choice is worth it to take the war cabal over a CAD?

Very good point here. If I do a CAD, not only would I get ObSec, but I could use the FW stuff like Fire Raptors and the other goods. I'll add a second list using the CAd when I get it made up.

It is slowly becoming an understanding for me that there are 2 very specific lists that can be considered actually competitive in 2k games or less, and 2 more that are certainly interesting and can stand their ground in most environments. Presented here from -what I believe- to be the strongest and moving down:

1. Omnicient Oracles + Thousand Son Cad to take Magnus as a LoW.

2. Rehati War Sect with Magnus and 3 Daemon Princes + daemons (Cad or Pandaemoniad) for WC generation.

3. Ahriman's Exiles + Daemon horror spam (cad or pandaemoniad) for WC generation + Renegade Knight.

4. A maxed out War Coven because terminators with rerollable armor saves are seriously really tough on the table.

1. You don't need a thousand sons CAD to take Magnus, any old CAD will do.

2. The 3 princes are going to be shy on warp charge because Magnus is going to be eating pretty much everything you can throw at him WC-wise.

3. You're going to have to be very careful about positioning of your 4 sorcerors since there's no units they can join and they're going to get focused down fast.

4. Unfortunately, there's not really enough points under 2k to get much done with the Coven and while the termies are effectively immune to non-AP2 fire, the rubricae aren't and while a 3++ rr1's is very nice, it's not foolproof either and you're going to struggle to deal with a bunch of things like Gladius that just has too many vehicles for you to take down with powers alone. 2k does open up a lot of options however, but the struggle is real at 1850 and I'd suggest that they are basically unplayable at anything less than that.

Reading this is so depressing... But I have to agree with most of the points made, I personally own 30 rubic marines (10 built and painted, ohrrs unbuilt and still on sprue from years ago).

I WANT to include them in lists, but any time I've used them they have died like tissue paper being dumped into water...

I'm so tempted to just start alpha legion instead of TS.... (And sell all my TS bitz...)

Maybe I'll do TS CAD and just proxy the rubrics as CSM

I have 27 painted rubrics which I've been using since the grand ol days of CSM3.5. And I must admit that I'm not able to use them all in most games.

With the new book, I've only had time to try several versions of the War Cabal, and I must say I really like it a lot. At 1850, the list runs Ahriman, a kitted out expensive Exhalted Sorcerer, Scarab Occult Termies in a Land Raider, and 9 rubrics in a Rhino, and 8 more rubrics who ride in another Land Raider with Ahriman and his Exhalted Sorcerer. A Heldrake rounds out the list. This list has only got 11+d6 WC dice, and precious few units. But with tactics and aggressive use at the right point, it's pretty successful on table.

Another similar list is almost the same, except there's only 1 Land Raider, the points being used to get another Rhino, Astral Grimoire and a las Predator. Also not too shabby on table.

A footnote here is that I run Thousand Sons prepared for close combat, which is why I take the Exhalted Sorcerer for his stats, as well as Seer's Bane. It's pretty successful against most armies, and will win majority of your games. Not all, but most. Oh, another footnote - it does take some practice in basic combat tactics.

I guess my point is: yes, you can build a Thousand Sons army based on Rubrics (though the Occult termies are awesome).